Data analyst turns sights from music to books

In 2009, Alexander S. White, a former Universal Music Group intern, co-founded a company called Next Big Sound that analyzed vast amounts of data about musicians-from Twitter activity to Wikipedia searches to radio appearances-and showed how it affected sales.

"If we can accurately measure where people are spending their time and attention," White says, "we can better forecast where they will spend their money."

Now White and Next Big Sound, which counts much of the recorded music industry as clients, is bringing those analytics to book publishing.